Previously, onboarding of new CSS personnel was a completely manual process and could take up to 120 days. This process included multiple emails, process groups, and forms, all of which were required during various stages of the onboarding process. There was no existing way to track the status of the next process owner's progress without continually requesting a status update from them, taking up valuable time and effort on both ends. With a manual process, there were plenty of times when emails would get missed or documentation would get lost/misfiled, requiring recompletion and resubmission and restarting the process.

With ServiceNow, the previously estimated 120 days have been whittled down to an approximate average of 24.5 days from start to finish. NAVSUP BSC is now able to upload all required forms into the system for each onboarding case, eliminating lost documentation. With everything in this toolset, NAVSUP BSC can track the progress of all cases. Multiple status update requests are a thing of the past, allowing complete transparency of the onboarding process. Within two days of going live with ServiceNow, Dion Castillo, ServiceNow project officer, logged the first onboarding case, and within the first month and a half, logged 25 cases with 10 already closed.

ServiceNow's automated capability expedites getting the staff on board, along with required security clearance, access to DoD automated accounts, and most importantly, to work within days instead of months. The automation and workflows making up NAVSUP BSC's new human resources (HR) onboarding process provide visibility into the status of every open case and enables supervisors and leadership to escalate at any point deemed necessary. The system automatically produces metrics on how long each element in the onboarding process works with each case, automatically identifying where additional resources may be required and assisting with balancing the organization's human capital assets.

The ServiceNow process is important on several levels. First, the return on investment is measured in recovered labor hours and increased productivity by getting the CSS staff operational in days instead of months. Second, the ServiceNow HR capability complies with the DoN chief information officer's directive of "Cloud First" as the ServiceNow instance is hosted in a DoD private cloud. Lastly, NAVSUP BSC partnered with the U.S. Army's Aviation Program Executive Office (PEO) for hosting their instance and to acquire ServiceNow licensing and CASK's Professional Services.

Kathy Lancaster, director, Navy ERP Sustainment; Phuong Nguyen, business financial manager; NAVSUP BSC security, information assurance, and the assistant customer technical representative staff changed the way they conducted CSS HR onboarding and are reaping the benefits. The ERP Sustainment Department is already planning for the addition of functional capability to onboarding the civil service workforce in their next release. These business process improvements are envisioned as part of a larger plan to roll out functionality of the ServiceNow platform across NAVSUP BSC.